I was amused this week when my friend Casey Phillips—a writer for the Times Free Press—asked readers for input on a story he was writing about Bigfoot. People were insistent, absurdly so, that a respectable news organization wouldn’t ask such a question of its readers. They shouted from every corner of the region that the very idea of Bigfoot existing is ridiculous, and as one responder put it, they should be “ebarressed [sic] to have even asked that question.” What you simpletons don’t understand is that Bigfoot is ABSOLUTELY and indisputably real. Science cannot explain the unexplainable. They are among us. You just have to open your eyes.

Anecdotes are enough

If a single person is witness to something extraordinary—regardless of how outlandish that “something” is—science must step up and prove they are in the wrong. This is the way the academy of science operates—and for good reason. As uneducated nonscientists, the burden of proof is up to the experts. If we completely dismiss the thousands of reported sightings from outside the continent, we still have hard evidence in the form of eyewitness accounts of an “ape-like” beast as far back as 1811. We need not worry ourselves about the daily lives of these creatures or whether a newspaper is doing a story on them. We should instead be worried when they will attack. Perhaps a little research on our part would be better than ignoring what could be a disastrous inter-species slaughter? But what do I know?

There is a TV show devoted to “Finding Bigfoot”

They have not found Bigfoot, but they have continued to accumulate what amounts to an overwhelming body of evidence for the existence of this creature. The show features a group of leading scientists as they investigate claims. Who cares if they haven’t captured a living or deceased specimen? They HAVE acquired hair, audio, photographs, infrared jirobolts, seismic bloops and footprint casts. We don’t have this much evidence for Jesus, and we all know he’s out there walking among us today. Look, the point is that there wouldn’t be an entire television show devoted to something that didn’t exist. That fact should be proof enough. We should be watching to learn their behavior in case of attack.

The children

We must think of the children of sasquatches (often labeled “lil’ squatches”) and wonder how we would feel if we were in a similar situation. Can you imagine how difficult it is for Bigfoot parents to raise their offspring in a constant state of alert, wandering pursuit? What if someone were chasing after you and your kids all of the time? Yeah, I’d be angry, too. The offspring of Bigfoots—like the children of anti-American terrorists—are just like human children, except they have been conditioned. We hate that which hates us. Is it no wonder that generations of Bigfoots are now programmed to run away and hide at the first sight of a human. We must prepare ourselves for the inevitability of that first pushback. They are there, hiding and waiting for our defenses to drop. We must not let them succeed.

We don’t want to believe

We live in an era of logical skepticism. Gone are the golden years of the handshake trust, that ability to look a man in the eye and truly believe what he is saying is the truth. Many people believe and incorporate into their lives stranger ideas than the existence of Bigfoot. Take the pseudoscience behind global warming, a ridiculous concept that many people not only believe, but alter their lives around. There is far more evidence of Bigfoot than for “global warming.” We just don’t want to believe in Bigfoot because it means we are not as smart as we thought we were. Plato famously said, “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” We are afraid of the light of Bigfoot. And that’s why they’re going to kill us.

I have seen Bigfoot

Twice, in fact. The first was as a boy in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. I was walking with my younger brother down by the creek on a cloudy evening in late autumn. We were attempting to fetch crawdads for Maw’s soup when we heard a hootin’ and rustlin’ across about 75 yards to the west of where we were standing. We thought it was one of our milking cows, initially, but realized that this creature was no cow. Instead, it was attempting to eat one of our cows. It was about 8 feet tall, and we could smell the odor of a million dirty diapers. We told it to “scat on,” and it sauntered back into the brush. My brother would kill me for telling you this, but he urinated on himself and I cried. It wasn’t until I visited Chattanooga’s Little Curiosity Shoppe on Market Street that I came face to face again with the Bigfoot of my youth. Again, I cried. And we will all be crying if we ignore the evidence.

Sean Phipps is a writer, tobacconist and ghost tour guide living in Chattanooga. Originally from the Tri-Cities, he spends much of his free time smoking cigars, awkwardly embracing his girlfriend and torturing his therapist. He has no criminal record. You can contact him via email and Twitter with comments and questions. This column, in particular, is 100 percent satire and/or absurd, nonsensical ramblings from a completely strange individual. Realize this before you get too upset. The opinions expressed in this column belong solely to the author, not Nooga.com or its employees.